


dread the day when dreaming ends

by anotherbuskitten



Category: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 02:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherbuskitten/pseuds/anotherbuskitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Near to death Jeremy recounts the parts of life he feels need to be remembered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dread the day when dreaming ends

_I am older now, than I was when we had that dream._

_I think, sometimes, that I am older than I was ever supposed to become._

_Chitty is, of course, gone now. Scattered in some junkyard in pieces; forgotten by all but myself. I am the last of us now, us four who went on that wonderful adventure._

_My sister passed only last week and so I am writing this to make sure that we are remembered._

////

In the years after our adventure I wondered, sometimes, what had become of those children in Vulgar.

I remember vividly, an occasion during one of my school days, wherein I was punished horribly for defacing school property.

I had decided, in my naïveté, to correct an author’s mistake. I had checked the atlas and upon finding that it did not have Vulgar on the map, I had drawn the town in.

I think I placed it in Germany.

I fixed this mistake in all the atlases I could find until the schoolmaster caught me.

I was caned for my mistake; one hit for every atlas I had written in and five more for back talking. It was the first time I received such a punishment but certainly not the last.

To be honest I still think of those children and, in my dreams I still see the face of the child catcher haunting me.

I never told my children the full story of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, though I often wanted to, for fear that they would laugh or ridicule my childhood.

My eldest, Henrich: for that was the name of one of the Vulgar boys, is a stubborn, clever child who had never any time for fairytales. And my daughter, Marianne; for my first mother, was already too lost in her own imaginings for me to risk adding another.

I did, however, sing to them on occasion. My voice, though nowhere near as sweet as my father’s, held up when I sang Hushabye Mountain to them at night.

And for all his logic and reading I think Henrich was the one who enjoyed it the most, and that he passed it on when he had his own children.

Marianne never gained a family of her own, preferring to loose herself in inks and paints than let real life take over.

For all my failings as a father I think they are happy with their lot in life and I know with all confidence that they are the best of me and the best of all they could be.

////

_I have worked happily in the sweet factory for all my adult life and when I left it pained me, for I felt that my childhood was finally over._

_I think, in some strange way, I mourned more for Chitty than any member of my family._


End file.
